RISING DRUG USE PROMPTS CALL FOR POLICY CHANGES

The children of the 1990s are not growing out of teenage habits of taking
drugs, including heroin and cocaine, until their late 20s, Britain's drugs
squad officers will be told today. Such rising drug use among
"twentysomethings" puts a large question mark against the government's
targets and their concentration on reducing drug misuse among under-25s,
according to the drugs criminologist, Howard Parker of Manchester University.

Professor Parker will tell the Association of Chief Police Officers' annual
drugs conference that what is needed is a programme to minimise the harm to
these "recreational drug users", and to the wider community, from drug
driving, accidents, public order offences, poor performance at work, and
minor mental health problems.

Prof Parker, a Home Office researcher on drugs, says it is time to abandon
as unrealistic the four-year-old target of reducing drug misuse among the
under-25s.

"Whilst adolescent drug use is stable, it is not falling; the age of first
use continues to fall. Heroin use is up, especially in Scotland and the
English regions. Cocaine use is rising rapidly, and will continue to do so
for a couple more years."

With drug use rising among "twentysomethings", he said, it was time to drop
the targeting of under-25s and realise that official action such as drugs
education was having little impact.

At best all that could be done was to "manage" drug abuse in Britain.

In this situation there was a case for making attempts to minimise harm to
drug users and the wider community the priority for official policy.

It was time to face the fact that more than 95% of drug users in England
were not "problem drug users" dealt with by the criminal justice system -
but rather were fairly law abiding and conventional. They were recreational
users who were in college, school or work during the week and "got off
their faces" at the weekend.

The more worrying aspect of the new drugs scene was that, as Prof Parker's
recent study of night clubbers and long term studies of young people and
drugs revealed, people who started abusing drink, drugs and smoking on a
regular basis at 15 now maintained their "intoxicated" weekend habits well
into adulthood with long term implications for their health.

A significant minority of this "going out" group mixed their substances,
and faced problems such as accidents, public order offences, poor
performance at work, drug driving, and a tendency to minor mental health
problems.

A public health harm reduction strategy was needed to help these
recreational drug users cope with these problems.

Prof Parker will also tell the Acpo conference that since most of these
recreational users bought their drugs not from professional dealers but
from their friends, he backed the recommendations of the Police Foundation
on drugs law reform that such not-for-profit "social supply", including for
some class A drugs, be treated less punitively than dealing.

Prof Parker will tell officers that there is now little prospect of meeting
the government's official target of stifling drug supply in the United Kingdom.

It is believed that the authorities are having so little success - even in
preventing import of 10% of the annual inflow of an estimated 300m ecstasy
tablets and 40 tonnes of cocaine - that the home secretary, David Blunkett,
is to downgrade the official target to "disrupting supply by drug traffickers".